LANL SCIENTIST, WIFE PLEAD GUILTY IN ESPIONAGE CASE

A former Los Alamos scientist and his wife will both serve prison terms after pleading guilty to providing an undercover FBI agent with a detailed scheme to help Venezuela establish a nuclear weapons program. Pedro Leonardo Mascheroni, who went by “Leo,” and his wife Marjorie Roxby Mascheroni, were charged in 2010 in connection with the espionage attempt, and late last week, the Department of Justice said Leo Mascheroni could serve between 24 and 66 months in prison after pleading guilty to converting government property, making false statements, communicating Restricted Data, and retaining national defense information. He also could face 10 years of supervised release. Leo Mascheroni worked in the lab’s famed X Division, where theoretical nuclear weapons work was done, from 1979 until 1988. Mascheroni’s wife worked at the lab as a technical writer, and she pleaded guilty to conspiring with her husband to convey Restricted Data to an undercover FBI agent and making false statements to the FBI in October of 2009. She is facing 12 to 24 months and nine years of supervised release. When he was indicted in 2010, Leo Mascheroni is alleged to have claimed that he could “deliver” a nuclear weapon to Venezuela in exchange for $793,000. Sentencing hearings for the couple have not been scheduled.